The ling has faded, overtaken by the red leaves of bilberry. A fine day, and fittingly Michaelmas: the day the Devil put his foot on the brambles, ending the season for blackberries. A myth, perhaps, but tidier than admitting people simply tired of picking them.
Michaelmas once mattered. It was one of the four quarter days, when farms changed hands, rents were demanded, and labourers were hired. On a fine autumn day, with the harvest in, folk could almost pretend it was a holiday before winter crushed the illusion.
For our farming ancestors it was a day of duty and feasting. Rents were paid with less ease than today’s digital transfers, yet they softened the blow with the famous Michaelmas goose. The tradition has dwindled to obscurity, kept alive by odd bods writing blog posts of old lore.
The link between goose and rent runs deep. Medieval tenants, who owed labour and gifts of produce to their lords, kept up the practice long after money rents took over. By Michaelmas the “stubble goose,” fattened on fallen grain, was ready for the table, the season’s natural offering.
In past centuries, processions of geese trudged slowly to London, mile by mile, to feed its aldermen and leading citizens, who in turn shared the remains with the poor. Now only Nottingham’s Goose Fair keeps the memory alive, reduced to spectacle rather than sustenance. Most of us either ignore the bird or eat it without a thought. We have kept the indigestion, but lost the meaning.
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